This morning at 6 a.m., I met my friend Jen for a track workout.
On the schedule for today: Yasso 800s.
If you aren’t familiar with Yasso 800s, the idea is that you take your marathon goal pace (3:30—3 hours and 30 minutes—for me) and run 800s at that same “time”—3:30 (3 minutes and 30 seconds).
This is not a full-out sprint but an interval workout repeated several times. I did six 800s today.
My workout:
We ran 2 miles to the track.
plyometric warm-ups
6 x 800 meters
(my times)
3:33
3:29
3:27
3:25
3:23
3:19
(I took 90 seconds of walking/resting in between each interval.)
2 miles back home
Total: 7 miles
As you can see, I was able to run most of the 800s faster than my goal of 3:30. Now either:
A.) I should have kept jogging instead of stopping to rest.
(This article says to jog for the same number of minutes it takes to run each interval. My theory was that if I could reduce the recovery time, this would only make me strong—although that maybe controversial.)
B.) I can run a marathon faster than 3:30 (!).
C.) I should have done more intervals. (The article linked above says to do up to 10.)
D.) This theory isn’t very accurate.
I’m hoping B is the correct answer!
I guess only time will tell. . . . . .23 days!!
This afternoon, I ran another 3 miles, which included 800 meters of barefoot running on the track.
Total for the day: 10 miles
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Question
Have you ever done Yasso’s 800s? If so, did you think they are an accurate predication of what you are capable of?
I have never done Yasso’s 800s. Though after reading this I am pretty intrigued to see if it would be accurate!
3:30 is an awesome goal pace! You are so speedy! I’m not focusing too much on speed – for my first marathon, I just want to enjoy the experience, finish, and feel great!
My dad is a HUGE advocate of them. He has done them for every single marathon he has ever run and they have always predicted his time. I was actually shocked to the read the title of your post and know that someone else does them.
I’ve done them–no, they’re not accurate for me–even with a shorter jogging interval. My first marathon I could do 10 in 2:59ish, didn’t do any for my second, did some before my third just for the heck of it. I did those in around 2:45. My three marathons were 3:16, 3:02, and 2:59.
That’s what I kind of figured. Bummer! I definitely feel like I could have gone faster for the intervals. Oh well, it is probably still a good workout.
What is your favorite speed/interval workout for the marathon?
I don’t know that I really have a favorite speed workout for the marathon. For me it seems like the workouts that did the best were multi-paced long runs and workouts that incorporated a variety of paces. There’s some good stuff in Brad Hudson’s book, “Running Faster from the 5k to the Marathon.” I didn’t do as much of the multi-paced stuff before Boston and did more long tempo runs, just because they’re less complicated–I wish I would’ve done more multi-paced stuff though because I made a big improvement with them between my first and second marathon.
800’s are my least favorite. I’d rather do 1500’s.